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Thu - Aug 20, 2015 : 01:56 am
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Forgiveness
 I should be way more tired than I am.

I just got done praying, and a day before that I had just got done sinning.  You know the kind I'm talking about.   It's the kind you really need to rid yourself of.  The kind that always keeps creeping around, finding an idle brain-cell to occupy...  So, yeah...  Hundreds, if not thousands of sins later, I found myself praying a few minutes ago, and mere moments into the prayer, the thought came to me, "I forgive you, Jason."  It was pure and simple and true.  I could feel it.  It wasn't anything terribly dramatic, but it was powerful.  Silently powerful.  "I forgive you, Jason."

It was as if God was trying to tell me something different by stating it as plainly as possible.  Does God have the power to forgive?  Yes.  Do I?  No.  Does anyone else?  No.  God has the power to forgive, and He was telling me He forgives me.

Then the thought came, "This is why Christ paid the ultimate price."  ...   "This, right here, is the true purpose of the Atonement of Christ."  ...  So I can feel worthy, and more than that.  So I can *be* worthy.  Without Christ, I wouldn't have a chance.  Nobody would.  Even the best of the best on earth wouldn't have a chance of salvation.

But now it was personal.  I had sinned, and I knew I had.  I had wilfully rebelled against God, and knew I was doing it.  I didn't rejoice in it, but nevertheless, I did it.   ...and then God forgave me.

It's as if I was a child...  Caught doing something beneath me for the 500th time, after having been told to not do it just as many times.   Yet, instead of a rod or a switch, I find a piercingly understanding father, who loves me persistently through every last instance.  A father who understands the deepest yearning of my heart in truthfulness and purity.   ...a father who sees me well into decades from now, and who has known me since the beginning of time, and whose seed of divinity is ... in me.   ...a sinner.

It's important, however, for me to realize that the complete lack of my ability to judge others, is equally lacking in power to judge myself.  When God says "I forgive you, Jason", He is speaking as the only person in existence with the power to do so, and as such, it's good for me to remember that I have no such power.  Should I choose to hold on to that sin, or even the thought of that sin, I am choosing to not allow the fulness of Christ's Atonement to distill itself upon me completely.  I have no power to pass self-judgement, as if to retain the sin while God himself has told me "I forgive you, Jason."

"I forgive you, Jason".  Simple words, pure in truth, spoken by God through the Holy Ghost.  The best thing I can do now is live with that forgiveness, and the power of the Spirit which comes through repentance, and know that I am indeed forgiven, and will be each time I ask for forgiveness in humility and with a broken heart.  For God is powerful to save.   ...and when his Spirit prompts me to action...

...I best be heeding it.
Comment by Dan on Sep. 22, 2015 @ 05:21 pm
Beautiful. Now, remeber, the Lord says that he will forgive who he will forgive, but of us it is required to forgive all. If that is our requirement, then we have that power, at least in that way. We don't have the power to atone for others to make them whole but we suffer because of their sins and that is our opportunity to become like the Lord.